1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus to prevent the forgery of cash register receipts, checks, negotiable instruments of all types, and other important documents whose authenticity must be ascertainable.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
It is a common practice of many retail stores to accept returned items directly at the point-of-sale counter when the returned item is presented along with a sales receipt for the item. For instance, if a consumer wished to return a newly-purchased television, he or she would take the television to the consumer electronics department of the store from which it was purchased. Upon presenting a sales slip as proof of purchase, many, if not most, department stores would then promptly return the purchase price of the television.
Unfortunately, many counterfeiters have found that this practice is ripe for fraud by forgery. Many stores use sales slips which are nothing more than a slip of conventional paper with sales data printed upon it. To perpetrate the fraud, the counterfeiter first legitimately purchases an item from the target store to study the appearance of the sales receipts issued by the target store.
The counterfeiter then forges a sales receipt for a relatively small, expensive item. The forger himself, or more often a co-conspirator, then shop-lifts the item described on the forged sales receipt from the target store. Then, a third co-conspirator returns the stolen item to the target store for a cash refund presenting as proof of purchase the forged sales receipt.
The target store, in the interest of prompt customer service and satisfaction, normally refunds the purchase price of the item with only the most cursory examination of the sales receipt. It is not until long after the fraud has been perpetrated that the forgery is discovered. By this time, the conspirators are already targeting a different store in a different town for the same treatment. In this manner, small, three-person forgery teams move from town to town, always one step ahead of the law.
This practice is particularly damaging to retailers because, unlike shop-lifting, in which the retailer loses the wholesale purchase price of the stolen item, in sales receipt forgery the retailer loses the entire retail price of the item, plus the amount of any sales taxes depicted on the forged receipt. Not only has the retailer lost the actual cost of the item itself, but the retailer has also lost the profit-margin reflected in the retail price of the item and the taxes included on the forged receipt.
To add further insult to injury, the cash given to the thief decreases the liquid cash reserves of the retailer. This has a particularly devastating effect on retailers because they tend to be very cash-poor organizations. The vast majority of retailers' assets are tied up in illiquid inventory which is leveraged with a rotating credit line in order to maintain a sufficiently large inventory of goods. At any given instant, only a very small amount of cash is available to a retailer. Cash realized from the sale of goods is used to pay interest on the rotating credit line and dividends to the stockholders, with the remaining cash being plowed back into inventory purchases. Overall, such retail stores can be extremely profitable, while still maintaining a relatively small reserve of cash assets. Because of this small cash reserve, sales slip fraud severely hampers the profitable operation of a leveraged retail store by further decreasing their already-limited cash liquidity.
While the above discussion is limited to sales receipts, similar types of forgery schemes affect all types of negotiable instruments, business documents, and other paper instruments whose authenticity denotes value, including bank checks and their equivalents (money orders, cashier's checks, postal money orders, etc.), coupons, lottery tickets, admission tickets, air travel boarding passes, and the like. For the sake of brevity and clarity, this specification shall discuss only the prevention of the forgery of proof-of-purchase sales receipts using the present invention. This should in no way be construed as limiting the present invention in any manner. The claimed invention functions to hamper the forgery of any type of paper document whose authenticity guarantees the holder of the document, or a person named on the document, something of value.
Several patents describe sales receipt papers, and methods of printing sales receipts and other important documents which are designed to thwart would-be forgers. For instance, an early patent, U.S. Pat. No. 192,624, issued Jul. 3, 1877, to A.E. Hix, describes a method of forming a stenciled impression on paper in which the paper to be stenciled is placed on top of an ink pad, with a sheet of blotter paper interposed between the paper to be stenciled and the ink pad. A stencil pen is then pierced through the paper and the blotter paper and into the ink pad below. When the stencil pen is withdrawn, a small amount of ink is deposited on the reverse side of the stencil paper. To determine if the entire stencil has been properly formed, the stenciled paper is inverted and the stenciled pattern can be determined by viewing the inked pattern on the back of the paper.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,819,375, issued Aug. 18, 1931, to F.J Matthews, describes a roller device for imprinting or puncturing, variable pattern over the signature on a negotiable instrument The variable pattern of dots or holes over the signature makes it difficult to alter or forge the signature.
A security marking method which utilizes fluorescent chelate is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,425, issued Apr. 5, 1988, to M. Jalon. Chelates are a group of chemicals which are formed from two chemical entities: an organic ligand, and a metallic element The organic ligand surrounds and binds to the metal element. Many ligand-metal combinations will fluoresce with a very specific spectrum under visible, U.V., or infrared light. Here, the paper to be marked is pre-treated with either the ligand, or the metal element. Alone, both of these chemical entities are completely invisible. To test the authenticity of the paper, the other chemical entity (i.e., the other of the ligand or metal element) is applied to the paper. The light spectrum of the paper is then analyzed to determine if the proper chelate has been formed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,957,312, issued Sept. 18, 1990, to P.S. Morello, describes a method of preventing sales receipt forgery by using an inked ribbon in which the ribbon is split lengthwise into various different regions. The different regions are then impregnated with different colors of ink. The sales receipts formed using such a ribbon contain alphanumeric characters in which the characters are formed from patterns of different colors of ink. This makes the receipts far more difficult to forge.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,064,221, issued Nov. 12, 1991, to F.V. Miehe et al., describes a method of distinguishing an original printed article from a copy thereof. At the time of printing, an invisible fluorescent ink grid is sprayed or impressed onto the substrate, along with the visible indicia. When passed under a U.V. scanner, the fluorescent ink grid, normally invisible, will fluoresce.
Another method to prevent forgery by using luminescent ink is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,088, issued Jun. 9, 1992, to W.W. Radcliffe et al. Here, luminescent ink is used in combination with a highly porous and absorptive register paper. The register paper is printed at the time of sale with a fluorescent ink which is absorbed completely through to the back side of the paper. The transaction record will then fluoresce on both sides of the register paper when passed under U.V. light.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,513, issued May 11, 1993, to O.C. Batelli et al., describes a method for preventing the counterfeiting of sales receipts which includes the steps of printing a fixed indicia on the register rolls with photoluminescent ink at the time of manufacture, installing a register roll into a cash register, and printing sales data (variable information) onto the register roll with photoluminescent ink. When a sales receipt is presented for a returned item, the receipt is passed under U.V. illumination, which will cause both the variable data and fixed indicia on the receipt to glow. The integrity of both the variable and fixed data can then be examined.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,279,222, issued Jan. 18, 1994, to E. Di Luco, describes a method and apparatus for forming a printing ribbon having segments of colored inks, dyes, or pigments placed serially in an alternating and predetermined sequence along the longitudinal length of the ribbon. The colors, and spacing of the segments along the length of the printing ribbon can be modified to provide for the printing of sales slips, bank checks and the like which are more difficult to counterfeit.
None of the above references, taken alone, or in any combination, is seen as describing the presently claimed method for the prevention of register receipt forgery.